The present invention relates to a vehicle visor and particularly to the visor body and mounting construction and its manufacturing method.
Visor bodies have been made utilizing a variety of materials including butterfly-shaped polypropylene cores which are upholstered and folded to complete a visor body, fiberboard cores of similar butterfly shape and foam core construction covered by upholstery. The solid foam core construction is difficult to upholster to obtain a visor configuration with an upholstered appearance that is sufficiently attractive to provide a commercial product. This results since, with a foam core, there are, unlike the butterfly core construction, no edges around which to tuck the upholstery fabric to provide a trim appearance. Further, the dated utilization of an upholstery bead and stitching is both excessively expensive and unattractive in today's modern vehicle interior designs.
In addition, visor cores made of a foam material are difficult to mount to a vehicle inasmuch as the foam material itself is not sufficiently structurally rigid to receive conventional pivot rod torque control and mounting structures. Typically, internal reinforcing members are required for foam core visors. Thus, although foam cores provide a relatively inexpensive and lightweight visor body, there is difficulty both in upholstering the visor in an attractive manner and in mounting such a visor core to the vehicle.
It is also desirable to manufacture visor cores of a recyclable material which is relatively inexpensive and is environmentally friendly. To this end, the present invention contemplates a visor construction which improves upon conventional foam core constructions and in some embodiments utilizes core material other than a polymeric foam.